KAMRAN DID NOT LOOK AT Hazan as the latter approached through what was fast becoming a violent storm, choosing to stare instead at a stripe of wet cobblestone shimmering under orange gaslight. The rain had grown only more brutal, thrashing all and sundry while a vengeful wind rattled around their bodies, unseating ribbons of frost from a stand of trees.
It was unlike Hazan to overlook Kamran’s cold reception, for though the minister knew his place—and knew that he was owed little of Kamran’s attentions—he relished any opportunity to provoke his old friend, as the prince was easily provoked.
Theirs was an unusual friendship, to be sure.
The solidarity between the two was real—if varnished over with a thin layer of acerbity—but the foundations of their comradeship were so steeped in the separation of their classes that it seldom occurred to Kamran to ask Hazan a single question about his life. The prince assumed, because they’d been acquainted since childhood, that he knew all there was to know about his minister, and it had never once occurred to him that he might be wrong, that a subordinate might possess in his mind as many dimensions as his superior.
Still, the general effect of proximity over time meant that Kamran was at least well versed in the language of his minister’s silence.
That Hazan said nothing as he stepped under the battered awning was Kamran’s first indication that something was wrong. When Hazan shifted his weight, a moment later, Kamran had his second.
“Out with it,” he said, straining a bit to be heard over the rain. “What have you discovered?”
“Only that you were right,” said Hazan, his expression dour.
Kamran turned his gaze up at the gaslight, watched the flame batter the glass cage with its tongues. He felt suddenly uneasy. “I am often right, Minister. Why should this fact distress you tonight?”
Hazan did not respond, reaching instead into his coat pocket for the handkerchief, which he held out to the prince. This, Kamran accepted wordlessly.
Kamran studied the handkerchief with his fingers, running the pad of his thumb over its delicate lace edges. The textile was of a higher quality than he’d originally considered, with an embroidered detail in one corner that the prince only now noticed. He struggled to distinguish the details in
the dim light, but it appeared to be a small, winged insect—just above which hovered an ornamental crown.
The prince frowned.
The heavy fabric was neither damp nor dirty. Kamran turned it over in his hands, finding it hard to believe that such a thing was in fact stained with the girl’s blood. More curious, perhaps, was that as the day wore on, Kamran grew only more interested in its mysterious owner.
“Your Highness.”
Kamran was again studying the embroidered fly, trying to name the uncommon insect, when he said: “Go on, then. I take it you’ve discovered something dreadful?”
“Indeed.”
Kamran finally looked up at Hazan, his heart constricting in his chest. The prince had only just reconciled himself to the idea of the girl’s innocence; all this uncertainty was reeking havoc on his mind.
“What, then?” Kamran forced a laugh. “She is a Tulanian spy? A mercenary?”
Hazan grimaced. “The news is bleak indeed, sire.”
Kamran took a deep, bracing breath, felt the chill fill his lungs. He experienced, for an extraordinary moment, a pang of what could only be described as disappointment—a feeling that left him both stunned and confused.
“You worry yourself overmuch,” the prince said, affecting indifference. “Certainly the situation is far from ideal, but we have the better of her now. We know who she is, how to track her. We may yet get ahead of any sinister plotting.”
“She is not a spy, sire. Nor is she a mercenary.” Hazan did not appear to rejoice in the statement.
“An assassin, then? A turncoat?” “Your Highness—”
“Enough of your filibustering. If she is neither spy nor assassin why are you so aggrieved? What could possibly—”
A sudden oof from his minister and Kamran took an elbow to the gut, knocking, for a moment, the air from his lungs. He straightened in time to hear the sharp splash of a puddle, the retreating sound of footsteps on slick stone.
“What the devil—?”
“Forgive me, Your Highness,” Hazan said breathlessly. “Some ruffian barreled into me, I didn’t mean t—”
Kamran was already stepping away from the protection of the awning. It was possible they’d been knocked into by a drunkard, but Kamran’s senses felt unusually heightened, and intuition implored him now to explore.
Just an hour ago the prince had been convinced of his own ineptitude, and though he took some comfort in his recent vindication as pertained to the servant girl, he worried now that he’d been so willing to doubt his better judgment.
He had been right to mistrust her all along, had he not?
Why, then, was he disappointed to discover that she was somehow duplicitous, after all?
Kamran’s mind had been thoroughly exhausted from the upheaval of the day’s emotional journey, and he thought he’d rather drive his head into a wall than lose another moment to the dissection of his feelings. He decided right then that he’d never again deny his instincts—instincts that were now insisting that something was amiss.
Carefully, he moved deeper into the night, fresh rain pelting his face as he scanned for the culprit.
A blur. There.
A silhouette struck gold in a flicker of gaslight, the figure illuminated in a flash.
A girl.
She was there and gone again, but it was all he needed to be certain. He saw her snoda, the length of linen wrapped around her neck—
Kamran froze.
No, he could not believe it. Had he conjured the girl to life with his own thoughts? He felt a moment of triumph, quickly chased by trepidation.
Something was wrong.
Her movements were frantic, unrehearsed. She ran through the rain as if she were afraid, as if she were being chased. Kamran followed swiftly, homing in on her before panning out again, surveying the area for her aggressor. He saw a fresh blur of movement, a form heavily obscured by the torrential downpour. The figure sharpened into focus by degrees; Kamran could only make out the true shape of him when he reached out, grabbing the girl by the arm.
She screamed.
Kamran did not think before he reacted. It was instinct that propelled him forward, instinct that bade him grab the man and throw him bodily against the pavement. Kamran drew his sword as he approached the fallen figure, but just as he lifted his blade, the cretin disappeared.
Jinn.
The unnatural act was enough to sentence the lout to death—and yet, how could you kill a man you could not catch?
Kamran muttered an oath as he sheathed his sword.
When he spun around, he spotted the girl only paces away, her clothes sagging with rainwater. The skies had not ceased their torment, and Kamran watched as she struggled to run; she appeared to be balancing packages in one arm, stopping at intervals to pull the wet snoda away from her face. Kamran could hardly see three feet in front of him; he could not imagine how she saw anything at all with a sheet of wet fabric obscuring her eyes.
“Miss, I mean you no harm,” he called out to her. “But you must remove your snoda. For your safety.”
She froze at that, at the sound of his voice.
Kamran was heartened by this and dared to approach her, overcome not only by concern for the girl, but by an impassioned curiosity that grew only stronger by the moment. It occurred to him, as he dared to close the gap between their bodies, that the wrong move might spook her—might send her running blindly through the streets—so he moved with painstaking carefulness.
It was no good.
He’d taken but two steps toward her and she went flying into the night; in her haste she slipped, landing hard on cobblestone, scattering her packages in the process.
Kamran ran to her.
Her snoda had slipped an inch, the wet netting sealing around her nose, suffocating her. In a single motion she tore the mask from her face, gasping for air. Kamran hooked his arms under hers and dragged her to her feet.
“My—my packages,” she gasped, raindrops pelting her closed eyes, her nose, her mouth. She licked the rainwater from her lips and caught her breath, keeping her eyes shut, refusing to meet his gaze. Her cheeks were flush with color—with cold—her sooty lashes the same shade as her sable curls, wet tendrils spiraling away from her face, some plastered to her neck.
Kamran could hardly believe his fate.
Her reluctance to open her eyes provided him the rare opportunity to study her at length, without fear of self-consciousness. All this time he’d been wondering about the girl and now here she was, in his arms, her face mere inches from his own and—devils above, he could not look away from her.
Her features were both precise and soft, balanced in every quadrant as if by a master. She was finely designed, loveliness rendered in its truest sense. This discovery was surreal to him to the point of distraction, all the more so because Kamran’s calculations had been wrong. He’d suspected she might be beautiful, yes—but this girl was not merely beautiful.
She was stunning.
“Hang the packages,” he said softly. “Are you hurt?”
“No, no—” She pushed against him like she might be blind, still refusing to open her eyes. “Please, I need my packages—”
Try as he might, Kamran could not understand.
He knew she was not blind, and yet she pretended at it now, for reasons he could not fathom. At every turn this girl had baffled him, and just as he was beginning to digest this, she threw herself to the ground, sparing Kamran only seconds to catch the girl before her knees connected with stone. She pulled away from him, paying him no mind even as her skirts sank into the old slush of the filthy street, her hands fumbling in the wet for sign of her wares. She moved suddenly into a stroke of gaslight, the flame bracing her in its glow.
It was then that Kamran noticed the bandages.
Her hands were wrapped almost to the point of immobility; she could hardly bend a finger. It was no wonder she struggled to hold on to her things.
He quickly scooped up the scattered items, depositing them into his satchel. He didn’t want to scare her by shouting over the rain, so he bent low and said close to her ear: “I’ve got your packages, miss. You may be easy now.”
It was the surprise that did it. It was the sound of his voice so near her face, his warm breath against her skin.
Alizeh gasped.
Her eyes flew open, and Kamran froze.
It was only seconds that they studied each other, but it seemed to Kamran a century. Her eyes were the silver-blue of a winter moon, framed by wet lashes the color of pitch. He’d never seen anyone like her before, and he had the presence of mind to realize he might never again. Sudden movement caught his attention: a raindrop, landing on her cheek, traveling fast toward her mouth. Only then, with a shock, did he notice the bruise blooming along her jaw.
Kamran stared perhaps too long at the discolored mark, the faint impression of a hand it formed. He wondered then that he hadn’t recognized it right away, that he’d so easily dismissed it as an indiscriminate shadow. The longer he stared at it now the harder his heart moved in his chest, the faster heat flooded his veins. He experienced a sudden, alarming desire to commit murder.
To the girl he said only: “You are hurt.” She made no response.
She was trembling. Drenched through. Kamran was suffering, too, but he had the benefit of a heavy wool cloak, a protective hood. The girl wore only a thin jacket, no hat, no scarf. Kamran knew he needed to convey her home, to make certain she did not catch her death in this weather, but just then he could not seem to move. He didn’t even know this girl’s name and somehow he’d been stricken by her, reduced to this, to stupidity. For the second time that night, she licked the rainwater from her lips, drawing his gaze to her mouth. Had any other young woman done such a thing in his presence, Kamran might’ve thought it a coquettish affectation. But this—
He’d read once that Jinn had a particular love of water. Perhaps she could not help licking the rain from her lips any more than he could help staring at her mouth.
“Who are you?” he whispered.
Her chin lifted at that, her lips parting in surprise. She studied him with wide, shining eyes, and appeared to be as confused by him as he was by her. Kamran took comfort in this, in the realization that they’d confounded each other equally.
“Will you not tell me your name?” he asked.
She shook her head, the movement slow, uncertain. Kamran felt paralyzed. He could not explain it; his body seemed anchored to hers. He drew closer by micrometers, propelled to do so by a force he could not hope to understand. What mere minutes ago might’ve struck him as lunacy now
seemed to him essential: to know what it might be like to hold her, to breathe in the scent of her skin, to press his lips to her neck. He was scarcely aware of himself when he touched her—light as air, faint as fading memory—a stroke of his fingers against her lips.
She vanished.
Kamran fell backward, landing hard in a puddle. His heart was racing. He tried and could not collect his thoughts—he scarcely knew where to begin—and he’d been rooted to the spot for at least a minute when Hazan came running forward, out of breath.
“I couldn’t see where you’d gone,” he cried. “Were you set upon by thieves? Good God, are you hurt?”
Kamran sank fully into the street then, letting himself be absorbed by the wet, the cold, the night. His skin had cooled too quickly, and he felt suddenly feverish.
“Sire, I do not think it advisable to sit here, in th—” “Hazan.”
“Yes, sire?”
“What were you going to tell me about the girl?” Kamran turned his gaze up to the sky, studying the stars through a web of branches. “You say she is not a spy. Not a mercenary. Not assassin nor turncoat. What, then?”
“Your Highness.” Hazan was squinting against the rain, clearly convinced the prince had lost his mind. “Perhaps we should head back to the palace, have this conversation over a warm cup of—”
“Speak,” Kamran said, his patience snapping. “Or I shall have you horsewhipped.”
“She— Well, the Diviners—they say—” “Never mind, I shall horsewhip you myself.” “Sire, they say her blood has ice in it.”
Kamran went deathly still. His chest constricted painfully and he stood up too fast, stared into the darkness. “Ice,” he said.
“Yes, Your Highness.” “You are certain.”
“Quite.”
“Who else knows about this?” “Only the king, sire.”
Kamran took a sharp breath. “The king.”
“He, too—as you know—had been convinced there was something unusual about the girl and bade me report to him my findings straightaway. I would have come to you sooner with the news, sire, but there were a great many arrangements to be made, as you can well imagine.” A pause. “I confess I’ve never seen the king quite so overwrought.”
“No,” Kamran heard himself say. “This is terrible news, indeed.”
“Her collection has been set for tomorrow evening, sire.” A pause. “Late night.”
“Tomorrow.” Kamran’s eyes were on a single point of light in the distance; he hardly felt a part of his own body. “So soon?”
“The king’s orders, Your Highness. We must move with all possible haste and pray no one else gets to her before we do.”
Kamran nodded.
“It feels almost divine, does it not, that you were so swiftly able to identify her?” Hazan managed a stiff smile. “A servant girl in a snoda? Lord knows we might never have found her out otherwise. You’ve most assuredly spared the empire the loss of countless lives, sire. King Zaal was deeply impressed with your instincts. I’m sure he will tell you as much when you see him.”
Kamran said nothing.
There was a tense stretch of silence, during which the prince closed his eyes, let the rain lash his face.
“Sire,” Hazan said tentatively. “Did you come upon cutthroats earlier?
You look as if you came to blows.”
Kamran placed two fingers in his mouth and whistled. Within moments his horse came galloping toward him, the stunning beast rushing to a reckless halt at his master’s feet. Kamran placed a foot in the stirrup and swung himself onto the slick seat.
“Sire?” Hazan shouted to be heard over the wind. “Did you meet with anyone out here?”
“No.” Kamran grabbed the reins, gave the horse a gentle nudge with his heels. “I saw no one.”
